Quote Originally Posted by MoonlightKnight
Not to mention this behooved me as an amateur programmer of only about one year to do my own research and find the answers. It is a valuable skill to know how to find information quickly and effectively if you don't know what you're doing. It also allows you to learn through trial and error.
True. It is just so sad that so many instructors spend so much of the time teaching what not to do. After doing 20 assignments containing 30 things not to do, is the student aware of these 30 things? Or did the instructor just churn out another bad programmer? That poor student may not know the 30 things, and here we rather despise that -- when the student goes away remembering most of the don'ts and few of the dos.

FWIW: http://predef.sourceforge.net/precomp.html